Implementing STEP UP in an Inner City School

Jolene Johnson, Edison High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota

As a female I went through my entire physics education career never having a female physics teacher or professor. My classes never seemed to have more than a handful of women, and often I was the only woman in the class or research meeting. My interest broadened beyond gender issues as I continued my schooling and saw the struggles that minority groups experienced in physics. I also became active in social justice issues, especially in my neighborhood of North Minneapolis which is historically the most diverse part of Minnesota. Therefore, when I heard about the STEP UP program at an AAPT meeting, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. The launch of the program also corresponded with my switch to teaching high school physics after 6 years of teaching college physics at St. Catherine University (an all-women’s college). A large part of my decision to switch to teaching high school was because I see high school as the best chance to influence a diverse group of students to consider physics. Research backs me up on this and it is part of what STEP UP is built on. I tell you all this because when I thought about how to implement these materials in my classroom, it was through the lens not only of my students, but also through my experience in physics.

STEP UP is an APS/AAPT joint venture with a goal of doubling the number of female physics majors by focusing on a few key lessons in high school physics courses. Here I am going to focus on the specifics of the lessons, how I implemented this in my diverse classroom, the student and teacher reaction to the lessons, and ideas for future work and improvement. I implemented these lessons in all my physics classrooms. This summer, I am a STEP UP ambassador and I look forward to meeting other ambassadors and further training at a workshop in Provo, UT.

About my students and my school

I teach at Edison High School in Northeast Minneapolis. Edison is a public neighborhood school that reflects the diversity of the inner city. 85% of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch (a measure of family income), and more than 85% of our students are minorities. We also have a large population of immigrants from all over the world including Somalia, Mexico, and Ecuador. Physics is taken in either 11th or 12th grade in our school and taking either physics or chemistry is a graduation requirement in Minnesota. Because of decisions about scheduling, my physics classrooms typically contain an even higher percentage of minority students and ELL students than the overall school population. Minnesota has one of the largest achievement gaps in the country and our school’s test scores reflect that gap. Our students tend to score relatively low in math, reading, and average ACT scores. This showed up in my physics classroom as I had to teach everything from number lines through trigonometry to help students be successful in physics. I used the lessons in four sections of regular physics (class size 25-35) and two sections of IB physics (class size 8-14). In two of the regular physics classes, I have an ELL co-teacher. At Edison about 40% of students are interested in a career in engineering or related fields based on student interest surveys. However, the population of students who leave ready to enter a 4-year college with a STEM career is relatively low.

Introducing the STEP UP materials

The STEP UP materials are free to download https://www.aps.org/programs/education/su4w/index.cfm. Especially as a first year high school teacher, I found them to be wonderful! They contain everything you need including the lesson plans, materials, PowerPoints, and background information. To get the materials you just need to sign up and then you will get a link. STEP UP really consists of two units: One on careers in physics and one on women in physics. The careers unit starts by having students think about what careers physicists do. Then the students are matched with a career profile of someone who majored in physics based on their interests. The students research this career and share what they learned. Then as a class, we go over some statistics and facts about how physics in useful in a variety of careers. Finally, the culmination is having the students write their own career profile. The students pretend they majored in physics and then write about how they use physics in the career of their choosing. As much as possible, I encouraged students to pick the actual career they are interested in to make it more personal.

The second lesson is about issues facing women in physics. The lesson opens with students doing a google search of famous physicists. If you haven’t done this, I encourage you do it. One of the key takeaways is that there is a long list of physicists but all except 1-2 are males, all except 2-4 are white, and most are long dead. Next, the students read short biographies of famous female physicists who have had their work overlooked, along with other current not-so-famous female physicists. The students reflect on the science the women discovered and their experience as a female in physics. Next, as a class we go through the statistics of women in physics for the US and other countries. Possible ideas for why women are underrepresented in physics are presented along with some research behind the ideas. Ideas like stereotype threat and unconscious bias are presented. Finally, the students reflect on their own experiences including what type of career they are interested in. The final reflection is an essay on why the students think women don’t go into physics and if society’s expectations have influenced their career decisions. This lesson originally had more elements of other types of diversity in physics. In the current version the lesson was tightened to focus on women in physics, but I made the decision to add more data and discussion on racial diversity and the intersection of race and gender (more on this later).

Implementation in our classroom

As stated, my classes contained 25-35 diverse students. Our classroom focuses on group problem solving from day 1. The students are set up in assigned groups of 3 and 6 students. The groups rotate about once per month and the groups are designed to be diverse in all ways including student academic strength. We used these same group structures to help us with discussions during both units. In our class, we made the decision to do the careers unit in early November at the start of our second quarter. Before this, we had built a classroom community by doing student information surveys, having the students write and share a “My STEM story” essay and focused on group problem solving skills. The lesson as designed is supposed to be 60-90 minutes plus homework. In our class, we spread the lesson out over four 44-minute periods. We did the women in physics unit in late March at the end of quarter 3 for regular physics, and in early June for IB physics. The timing was partly because of spacing of content, and partly based on having a well-established classroom community before looking at difficult issues. The women in physics unit was designed for 60-90 minutes. In our classroom, we spent three 44 min class periods in regular physics and two 44-minute classes plus significant homework for IB physics.

Reaction of students and school community

Overall, the students were very engaged in these lessons; they reported they enjoyed the lessons; and felt the lessons were some of the most valuable things we did all year. In end of year surveys students consistently said both lessons were their favorite units of the year and that the units helped them see the connection of what they were learning to their everyday life.

Reflection: Careers unit

As someone who came from a college setting with a focus on career readiness, I was very surprised to learn that most of my students had given very little thought to their future career options before we did the careers unit. Most students had a very limited knowledge of what a physicist or STEM major did for a job. It was in this unit I realized I needed to define STEM, because more than half my students did not have any idea what STEM stood for. Before the unit, most students thought physicists either did research in a big lab or were teachers or professors. As we went through the unit and read all the different career profiles, the students were genuinely surprised at the wide range of careers and job titles that physicists had. Based on post unit surveys there was an increase in the number of students who were interested in physics majors and physics careers. The biggest interests were in areas related to medicine and biomedical engineering jobs. As Minnesota is known for its medical device industry, if this unit was fully implemented in all Minnesota high schools, it could help our state diversify that important workforce. The students were very interested in most of the career data, especially about MCAT and LSAT scores by major. At least 75% of the students had never heard of these tests before, but once they realized the tests were important for doctors and lawyers they were interested in ways they could improve their scores. There was a robust discussion of why physicists do so well. This discussion helped me connect the critical thinking and problem solving skills I have been trying to teach them to actual useful skills in a wide range of careers.

The career profile was highly engaging for the students and really helped them see themselves as physicists, STEM career professionals, and as scholars with specific career goals. Students wrote about a wide range of careers. They used the career profiles they read as inspiration, but also applied them to their own lives and goals. Many of the students wrote about medical careers and engineering careers. After writing the profiles, the students had to make another list of physics careers and sort them by general areas. This class map contained a lot more areas and a lot more careers in each area. The biggest increases were in medicine and humanities careers (like science writing).

The impact of this unit continued well past the single week we spent on the unit. I became an informal college mentor to many students interested in physics and engineering. During college application and selection process, I met with many students with potential interest in physics and engineering. We discussed things like which colleges would be a good fit for their majors, possible scholarships, and even selecting classes by the end of the year. Since the vast majority of my students will become first generation college students, having this connection was very useful to them. They asked questions from “what is a major?” to “how does taking 4 classes actually count a full time?” I had at least 10 students (all students of color, half women) who expressed strong interest in majoring in physics or engineering at a 4-year college. I also talked with another 5-10 students about options for starting at local community college programs with engineering pathways. I know some of these students did not have engineering on their radar before this unit. While the goal of the program is to increase the number of physics majors, I can see a huge bonus benefit is the increase in the diversity of students considering STEM majors like engineering. The students continued to make the connection of what we were learning in class to their potential careers and majors. Students requested that we cover things like fluids and other physics topics they saw as possibly relevant to their future goals. While I was not able to cover all the topics the students expressed interest in, they gave me many ideas for future topics to cover in the various physics courses.

Reflection: Women in physics/diversity unit

While the students responded well to both units, they listed the diversity unit as their favorite. Since I expanded the women in physics unit to include diversity, the students felt a specific connection to the information being presented. In all my classes, I only had about five white male students and even those students saw some of their struggles reflected in the information presented in the lesson (like low income or first generation college student status). In end of year and unit surveys students said that it helped and they had better understanding about why I care so much about helping them learn and appreciate physics. Hearing my background and my articulation of why diversity in physics really matters gave students more insight into who I am as a teacher and person. This made them more open to having discussions with me about all sorts of topics. When the statistics on the lack of diversity and women in physics was presented students fell into two camps. I would estimate about three-quarters of them were very surprised to learn that there are entire career fields that are still so segregated by gender and race. The other quarter of the students had some information on the lack of diversity but they had not done much thinking about why this was. When I first asked them for possible reasons to explain the lack of diversity, they struggled to come up with reasonable answers. After our class discussion of some of the psychological factors such as implicit bias and stereotype threat, the students made their own list of 20 possible factors that lead to the low diversity in physics. I was happy to report to the students that many of the ideas they came up with were things that researchers were looking into. This discussion was also another sneaky way to get students thinking like scientists. They were coming up with hypotheses based on the data presented. Some of them were so excited to see if their ideas were right that they went to google to see if their ideas had been studied and what sort of data there was. There was one female African immigrant in particular that became so interested in this subject that I will be working with her on her personal IB project to explore the research of why women don’t pick physics majors. Many other students were very interested in this type of research and asked what path they could take so they could do these types of studies in the future. Other students applied what they were doing to our own particular school and asked some very pointed questions about why our school lacked the supplies and support that the richer whiter school districts had. This conversation in particular was exciting to me because my goal as a teacher is to empower students to force change in systems that have traditionally excluded them (including physics). I know as one female physicist I cannot change the culture in physics, but my hope is that I can make a bigger difference through widening the types of students who enter the physics community.

In addition to student feedback, I also got feedback from my teacher mentor and principal who both observed a day of each lesson. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. They appreciated the lesson structures and relevance to our diverse population. They also liked how students seemed to claim ownership of the material by the end of the unit. My mentor asked me to share this information with other science teachers in the district (which is my plan as an ambassador!) My principal encouraged me to have discussions with other science department teachers as to how they could add something similar to their classes.

Looking to the future

Having completed my first year in a high school classroom, I am now focused on how to leverage this unit the student response to improve more areas of my class and student engagement. Next year I am hoping to set up at least one company field trip shortly after the careers unit so the students can meet real physicists and engineers. I am hoping to visit Medtronic, 3M, or one of the other great STEM companies we have in Minnesota. I closed the year by having students watch Hidden Figures and a documentary called Jim Crow of the North, which focuses on how housing discrimination shaped race relations in Minneapolis. I realized that having these movies closer to the diversity/women in physics unit would lead to discussions that are even more fruitful. Next year, I hope to extend the entire unit to about 2 weeks total and have the students write reflections that are more extensive on how society had shaped their career choices. In surveys, students also requested to learn more about diverse physicists, so I plan to add that in, hopefully at least one diverse physicists focus per physics unit.

Final thoughts

If you are at all on the fence about implementing these lessons in your classroom, I encourage you to try it. I think with some adaptation, these lessons could be used for anything from 9th grade through even upper level college courses. You might be thinking “I already have way too much physics to cover, how can I take a day or week away from that?”. First, I encourage you to think about the potential impact on your students. Very few physics units are going to give students a completely new way of seeing themselves the way that these units can. The careers unit can be leveraged to get more student buy in to wide range of physics topics. The diversity unit helps students see that you do care about more than cramming physics knowledge into their heads. If you would like more training or want to talk to someone who has done the units any of the STEP UP ambassadors would be glad to help. You can find our information here.

Jolene Johnson teaches Physics at Edison High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is an ambassador for the STEP UP program. She received her BA in honors physics from Gustavus Adolphus College, and a MS and PhD in physics from University of Minnesota. She taught at St. Catherine University for 6 years before switching to teaching high school in the 2018-2019 academic year.

Disclaimer – The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on Education Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.